


It's All For You

by FyrMaiden



Category: Glee
Genre: (Minor) Character Death, Casual Sex, Hate Crimes, Homophobia, M/M, Mention of Blood Play, Mention of emotional/domestic abuse, mention of non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-27
Updated: 2013-02-27
Packaged: 2017-12-03 19:10:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/701674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FyrMaiden/pseuds/FyrMaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kurt is 38 years old. Falling for his daughter’s best friend shouldn’t be an option.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's All For You

**Author's Note:**

> As ever, I do not have a beta for what I write. I should probably do something about that. Age gap is a familiar trope. There's nothing new here, really. Jenn wanted Kurt to be the older of the two, though, so here it is. Age gap of twenty years, Blaine is 17-22. Title is magpied from Lana Del Ray's 'Video Games', which seems to fit the feel of the piece in tone.
> 
> Grammar issues are all mine. Clunky and/or run-on sentences are all mine. I apologise in advance.

Kurt Jackson-Hummel was just 31 when his husband sat him on the edge of their bed and told him that they were probably not going to get the forever they’d always planned. He said – and Kurt _tried_ to listen to him, past the roar of blood in his ears and the sharp swoop of his heart into the pit of his stomach – that he had a tumour in his brain, which had been causing his mood swings and his exhaustion, the tension headaches and the blackouts, and that it was almost certainly inoperable. “Almost?” Kurt whispered, clinging to the word, and Marc smiled sadly.

“Don’t, baby,” he whispered, stroking a thumb over Kurt’s cheekbone and leaning in to kiss him softly. “I – I’m so scared already.”

Marc had spent that weekend making a list of things he wanted to arrange before he died, the top priority of which had been making sure his daughter was cared for as he wanted. Since they’d been together there had been a plan for Kurt to adopt her, to make her as legally his as she was emotionally, but with her father dying (Kurt had spent the weekend choking on the word, even as he filled in form after form after form) it had become a necessity. Marc had also checked the status of his life insurance, and the nominated beneficiaries, and Kurt had clung to him and whispered that he didn’t care, he didn’t want the money, he wanted _Marc_...

They’d spent their last months together in a cocoon of love and warmth. They celebrated their anniversary in Montana with Marc’s parents, and Christmas in Ohio with Kurt’s, and they’d gone to Boston for Kurt’s birthday. “Not quite England,” Marc whispered against his ear, and Kurt had laughed and ducked his head and said it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore. In his heart, he was already counting days and hours and minutes.

Marc died that April. Kurt’s only consolation was that, in the end, it wasn’t drawn out. Eight months after his diagnosis – and two months past his life expectancy – Marc died in hospital with his husband at his bedside. Kurt was 32, a widower, and a father.

He’d forgotten how lonely he’d been before Marc, and a 10-year-old in mourning for her actual dad (Kurt was never enough when she woke in the night crying for Marc, her fists bunching in Kurt’s top as she cried and wailed and begged for her daddy, and Kurt couldn’t find the words to ask her to stop because if it would work, he’d do the exact same thing) did nothing to ease the situation. They found a rhythm, though, eventually, and – when Clara was 12 – Kurt started dating casually again, which Clara had deemed fine in theory and been far less easy with in practice. The first time he brought a guy home with him, Clara had kicked off in such a way as Kurt had to ask him to leave and they had to have serious words about acceptable behaviour. She’d clung to him then, shock of red curls tickling his skin as she held him tight and asked if he’d forgotten about her daddy already.

“Oh, honey,” Kurt whispered, kissing her gently and smoothing her hair back from her face. “I’ll never forget him, okay? But I – I’m not meant to be alone. You’ll understand one day.”

Clara nodded her head and settled against his chest all the same. “I love you,” she said softly, and his hand stilled in her hair.

“Love you too, pumpkin.”

Still, years passed as they inexorably do. Clara grew from a headstrong 12-year-old into an opinionated and feisty 15-year-old. She learned, somewhere around the 13 mark, what “fag” meant and how it applied to her dads, and that was the starting point for her first fight, which had resulted in her being suspended for a week and another boy being expelled. She understood her dad was gay – that her dads were gay, together, married – but couldn’t begin to conceive of why it was anyone else’s problem or business. She’d seen how love was supposed to work.

That was when she met Blaine Devon Anderson, 17 and freshly transferred and so very lonely in a way she recognised on a bone deep level. Clara took it upon herself to be his friend, because he looked like he could use one, and because she knew without him having to say anything that he was like her dad.

\---

It’s a cold Thursday two weeks before Halloween when Kurt receives another call from his daughter’s principal. “She’s been involved in a fracas,” says the disembodied voice on the phone, and Kurt feels his heart sink. It’s not the first time he’s had this conversation. It’s not even the first time this year. Clara is rising 16 and he thinks her lashing out at the world is a belated response to losing her dad when she was 10. She’d been withdrawn and quiet for a long time after, but since the move to high school she’d come into herself a little more again. Kurt had been immensely grateful for the small mercy and the respite that came with her finding friends and a place to belong, even if it came with a weekly phone call regarding her temper and her tendency to blow up over small things.

In middle school, it had been that Kurt was gay that made her lash out most frequently. So what if her dad had loved another man, it didn’t invalidate her or her life or how much she was loved, and you know, _fuck you_ , no it didn’t mean she’d been touched inappropriately as a baby, or that it made her automatically queer as well... Kurt had had many conversations with her about trying to ignore the people trying to bring her down, with limited success. A new crowd at her high school meant that no one knew about Marc, and no one knew about Kurt, and he’d hoped she could blend more seamlessly without the shadow hanging over her. Clara had spent her freshman year making sure people knew about her life. She had a rainbow flag in her locker, one of Kurt and Marc’s wedding photos, where she’d been a flower girl, and, when the guidance counsellor had accidentally asked her how she and her mom were coping since her dad had passed, Clara had been more upset about the heteronormativity of her teachers (and their apparent inability to _read_ ) than she had been about Marc. (Kurt had to deal with the fallout of that realisation later that night as well, reassuring her carefully that it didn’t mean she’d forgotten about him but that she was living her life and not wallowing and it was okay to not dwell upon him all the time; he reminded her that he’d lost his mom when he was 8 and, three decades later, he still missed her sometimes, even if Carole had been in his life far longer than his mom ever had. Clara had hugged him then and kissed his temple and said she loved him and he should tell her about the man he’d been seeing that she wasn’t supposed to know about and he’d laughed easily before telling her it was a nothing relationship that was going nowhere. “Absolutely nothing to tell,” he said with a sigh. “Do your homework and I’ll make your favourite for dinner.”)

There’s a boy sitting with Clara outside of the principal’s office when Kurt finally makes it in. Clara is holding his hand tightly in hers, talking to him quietly, and Kurt rifles through the hoards of information she reels off at him on a daily basis to search for a name. _Blaine_ , his brain supplies. This must be Clara’s pet project. The boy is small and withdrawn and busy trying to look even smaller, and Kurt recognises his own high school experience in the boy’s clouded expression. He does offer Clara a smile, though, when she bumps his shoulder and gestures towards Kurt when she sees him approaching, although her smile fades quickly at Kurt’s expression.

“Don’t yell,” she says quickly, green eyes flashing with a look that brooks no argument. Kurt has to wonder which of them is supposed to the adult here. “I tried to get them to not call, but – but there’s this football player...”

Kurt zones out, still staring at Blaine, and the longer he looks the more he can see the way he’s cradling his elbow, the concealer beneath his eyes that’s barely masking the lack of sleep, the faint discolouration of his jaw. He doesn’t look like a fighter. There’s always a football player, though, always a jock who thinks his social status gives him the right to mercilessly hound everyone lower down the high school food chain. If Kurt’s correct, Blaine’s at the very bottom. He remembers Clara mentioning they were in show choir together, and the way Blaine looks like he’s been slammed forcibly into something hard makes Kurt’s bones ache in sympathy.

“...and so I might have broken a jock’s nose,” Clara is saying when he starts listening again. Blaine is looking at her with a mix of adoration and awe, and Kurt’s a little bit proud of her for standing for something that matters. Still, the fact remains she hit someone.

“Clara, we’ve had this conversation,” he says softly, crouching in front of her. “You can’t hit people just because-”

“-He hit Blaine first!” she says, clutching Blaine’s hand tighter, if anything.

“As may be, sweetie. But you need to tell a teacher. You can’t just hit people.”

Kurt remembers William McKinley High School in Lima, Ohio. He remembers the years of locker checks and slushies to the face, of dry cleaning bills and ruined shirts. He remembers David Karofsky cornering him in the locker room and kissing him, the dizzy nausea of kissing a boy for the first time and of that boy being the one who had made his life hell on a daily basis for months. He remembers the casual indifference of the entire faculty because Kurt had made himself a walking target and there was nothing anyone could do. (He also remembers, with a certain degree of fondness, that of all the teachers he’d had, only Sue Sylvester – his acerbic, underhand, vitriolic, mean cheerleading coach - had ever made a stand on his behalf, as futile as it might have been.) He knows things are better here, that this city is more understanding that conservative Ohio had ever been of him, but it’s not perfect. It’s obviously not perfect.

“Can Blaine come home for dinner?” Clara says. Kurt blinks at the abrupt change of direction.

“I’m sure Blaine wants to ice his elbow and change his clothes,” he says. It’s not a no, but at least this way the boy isn’t being cornered by his daughter on one of her missions.

“No, sir,” Blaine almost whispers, his eyes brimming with something Kurt understands but can’t name. God, his eyes. Kurt forces himself to blink and look away. Blaine’s eyes are full of hurt and fear and pride, and Kurt can’t let himself meet them because his heart clenches painfully when he does. Blaine’s voice is honey smooth as well, a little high, a little reserved, incredibly scared, and Kurt wants to wrap him in his arms and never let him go. “My – my mom’s away this weekend, and my dad and I don’t, we’re not, um, we haven’t been close in a while.” Blaine is studying his fingernails when Kurt risks looking at him again and Clara is staring at them both with rigid defiance. She looks ready to argue and fight and claw her way to victory, even if victory is only a tray bake lasagne because Kurt was running too late to get fresh ingredients in.

“Fine,” Kurt sighs. “Blaine, do you need to get anything from your locker?”

The hope and relief that blossoms on his face shouldn’t, Kurt thinks, hurt the way that it does.

\---

At Kurt’s insistence, Blaine texts his dad and waits for a response (“OK” which is sort of standard with his dad these days) before he gets in the car. Clara sits in the back with him, rifles through her bag for her iPod and thrusts it through the gap in the seats for Kurt to take it and plug it into the stereo.

“If you’re going to make me listen to dubstep, Clara,” he threatens, checking what is playing before connecting it. She reaches for Blaine’s hand again as she buckles herself in, helps him with his seatbelt when his face contorts as his ribs pull.

“This is your playlist,” she says softly and Blaine frowns at her before looking away. He resolutely doesn’t think about her dad. He can’t think about her dad. Instead, he focuses on his hand in hers and lets himself hum along to the songs blasting from the radio, from Lady Gaga to Pink to Katy Perry, via indie bands he’s both heard of and hasn’t, to gay anthems that have Kurt tapping his fingers on the wheel. He loses himself in the music and finds himself actually whispering the lyrics to ‘Hair’ with Gaga when it rotates through the list.

 _“I’ve had enough, I’m not a freak, I just keep fightin’ to stay cool on the streets,”_ he murmurs, and catches Kurt watching him in the rear view mirror, his expression unreadable enough for Blaine to risk a tiny smile. His heart skips when Kurt returns it.

Clara’s home is more than he had expected. He’s used to the imposing facade of his own house, and expects everyone to live in clinical shoeboxes like he does. The house Clara shares with her dad, though, is warm, redbrick, inviting, and Blaine wants to live in it without even seeing the inside. He reaches for Clara and finds Kurt, Clara having already bounced up to the front door. “Oh,” he stutters, pulling his hand back, and Kurt’s answering smile is genuine.

“You won’t break me, Blaine,” he says. “You haven’t got anything I can catch if you touch my skin.”

Blaine flicks a smile but it misses his eyes altogether. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I know that.”

He wishes he could touch the sadness in Kurt’s steady gaze, wishes he could do something to ease it. He wants to say that high school is nearly over, that he’ll be at NYU soon, that he’s out, and he’s okay and it’s only a few more months. Six more months. He’ll be an adult, he’ll be away from his dad and the jocks of the world, and he’ll be doing something he genuinely loves. But he doesn’t. He can’t. He doesn’t know Kurt and if school has taught him anything, it’s that people don’t want to listen to his problems when he could fix them all by just tiptoeing back into the closet. Instead he fixes his best show smile, all teeth and boundless energy, and asks what they’re eating because he’s suddenly famished. He can see Kurt’s not fooled, but Kurt’s an adult and let’s Blaine believe he is. He only gestures to the house and Clara, and Blaine admires him quietly, the casual way he inhabits his body and the way he moves. (He’s beautiful, Blaine thinks, if he’s being completely objective; he’s all porcelain skinned perfection, from the sharp swoop of his cheekbones down the endless column of his neck to the open V of his collar, and Blaine wants desperately to pull the collar aside, to study his collar bones and shoulders and chest, to touch his tight perfect waist, to feel Kurt’s body pressed against his own, his thighs against Kurt’s narrow beautiful hips, and he knows it’s inappropriate because Kurt is more than twice his age, probably, but he wants to touch and be touched and it makes him dizzy)

He tells Clara to take Blaine upstairs. Blaine wants to argue, to say he’ll help in the kitchen, but Clara beats him to it. “I’m sure we’ve got something we can make fresh,” she says.

“Not unless you fancy a trip to the store,” Kurt counters.

“Pop!”

“Then it’s the lasagne, kiddo.”

“I – I can drive,” Blaine offers, tentative and unsure. He doesn’t have his car but if it’s needed, he can drive. If Kurt really doesn’t want to go back out, Blaine is willing to take Clara and get food. At this moment, he will take any opportunity presented to him to have a reason to spend all evening in the kitchen with Kurt. Even if it’s chopping onions.

In the end, Kurt gets his keys and tells them to make themselves useful. He’ll make chilli from scratch if it’ll keep them quiet. Clara nods animatedly, and Blaine only cants his head and plays with the edge of the island. “Clara,” Kurt says and she raises her eyebrows at him. “Do you have homework to do?”

“Uh, yeah. But Blaine-”

“Blaine, do you want to come to the store with me?”

Blaine flicks his gaze between the two of them and shifts uncomfortably on the spot before jerking his head quickly. “Yes, sir. If – if it’s-”

“Just grab your jacket,” he says. “Clara, sweetie. I want evidence of homework being done. Not complaints from the neighbours because you were playing True Blue Madonna far too loud. Again. No one wants to hear La Isla Bonita at that kind of volume.”

“You do it.”

“Clara.”

“Fine. God.” She doesn’t say anything until Blaine starts giggling, raising her eyebrows at him.

“Papa Don’t Preach,” he grins and even Kurt barks a laugh at that. Blaine settles more easily into his skin, ice finally broken.

\---

Over the course of the next two months, Clara and Blaine become almost inseparable. Kurt finds himself leaning against the frame of his office door, watching them work on his Mac as Blaine tutors his daughter in history and English and she attempts to derail him with cute boys. At least eavesdropping on them confirms one thing, he thinks; Blaine is definitely gay.

It’s a Saturday in early December that changes everything. He’s in his bedroom putting away a stack of washing when he hears them coming up the stairs. Clara, just like her father, announces her presence early and loudly, her boots clattering on the exposed wood, her laughter raucous and carefree in a way that always reminds him of Marc. Still, she knows the rules.

“Clara, boots,” he says, poking his head around the door. “You know you don’t wear your boots upstairs.”

“We were only stopping for books,” she huffs. “And the laptop. We’re going to the library. Blaine’s going to help me pass geometry.”

“Is there anything Blaine’s not helping you pass?” Kurt asks. Blaine blushes and stares at his feet. It’s endearing, Kurt thinks, because endearing trumps adorable and he is not, absolutely not, wondering how far beneath his shirt that blush extends.

“Well, I’m trying to help him not pass as well.”

Kurt snorts a laugh at the thought of the boy on his landing even trying to pass, in his mustard coloured jeans and shawl neck cardigan, bona fide button down and bow tie to top it off. “Boots still come off downstairs,” he says and, at Clara’s wrinkled nose and rolled eyes, “Rules are rules, kitten. Boots downstairs. Or the repairs to the woodwork come out of your allowance.”

He’s really not trying to listen when he hears them speaking through the wall, Clara’s voice muffled in the depths of her closet still raging about how her life is so immeasurably unfair, Blaine’s almost crystal clear as he asks her how old Kurt is.

“What?”

“I just don’t think he looks old enough to be your dad, that’s all.”

“How old do you think he is?”

“I don’t know. 30, maybe 32?”

Clara’s laugh isn’t mocking. “I know, right? I wish they were my genetics, too. He’ll be 38 in February.”

Blaine whistles low and says, apropos of nothing much, “I’m 18 in January.”

Kurt closes his bedroom door very quietly and almost tiptoes down the stairs. He barely even lifts his head when Clara hollers that they’re going to the library now, and she’ll be back before dinner. “Blaine’s coming too, Pops,” she says, poking her head into the kitchen. “He’s okay with your special mac and cheese. Or whatever.” Her grin illuminates her face and Kurt smiles easily.

“Have fun,” he says. Doubtful though it may be. Geometry isn’t any more fun because your teacher’s cute. He knows that for a fact.

He’ll never admit aloud that he’s starting to think Blaine is cute.

\---

Blaine stops being subtle in December. While Clara disappears to her room to put away her things, Blaine hangs around the kitchen. He knows he pushes the boundaries of acceptability with Kurt, but when Kurt doesn’t actively push him away he figures that it’s okay. Kurt’s the first man Blaine has known who makes him believe that he could, some day, have all of these things for himself. And Blaine wants them desperately. He wants the house and kitchen with gadgets his 17 year old brain can’t fathom a use for. He wants the garden and the children and the quiet domesticity of coming home every day to a loving partner and talking about his day with a glass of wine and the news on mute. He wants to make dinner with his husband, and revel in the small brushes of shoulder and hip as they work together to prepare dinner, and he wants to curl up at night with the warmth of another human being grounding him. Blaine wants to be laid out and worshipped and he wants to give every single part of himself to someone, keeping nothing back.

He wants those things with _Kurt_ , and he knows how wrong that is.

Kurt laughs at his jokes, though, and his fingers are gentle when they guide his hands with a knife or wipe flour from the bridge of his nose. Blaine feels his heart skip slightly when Kurt makes observations.

“Is that scarf new, Blaine? It looks warm.”

“Your fingers are freezing, sugar. Let me make you coffee.”

“It’s December, Blaine. You’re making me cold. How are your feet not freezing?”

“You look good in grey. That cardigan is beautiful.”

“You wear glasses? You look very debonair.”

Blaine’s favourite, though, is when he wears his hair loose for the first time, and Kurt’s voice catches in his throat and rushes out in a startled “Oh” of shock before he catches himself and pushes a curl back from Blaine’s forehead. “What do you do to it? Why on earth would you hide this?”

Blaine shrugs his shoulders and looks away, a frown creasing his face briefly before he smoothes it away again. “I guess it’s just easier to blend in... the other way, I mean. With my hair. I – I don’t like standing out. It’s never really, I’ve never, I don’t like people to notice me.”

“Clara says you’re a featured soloist,” Kurt says, stepping out of Blaine’s space again. Blaine wants to tell him not to, wants to grip his wrist (bicep, hip, anything) and tell him to keep breathing the same air. He doesn’t though. He can’t. Blaine’s aware that he’s not the kind of boy that men love. He’s the kind they fuck and forget. He doesn’t want to be that person for Kurt.

“Yeah. Yeah, I am. But, but no one cares about glee, Mr Hummel,” he smiles slightly, pulling himself back together slowly. “Except for a couple of guys, I think the school prefers to forget we exist. I can sing all the songs I like all over the north east, and they’ll all just put it down to the fact I’m a fa-”

“Don’t.”

“I’m gay, sir. It’s not like I can get any lower.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“It’s been brutally reinforced,” Blaine says bitterly. He doesn’t mean to burden Kurt with these things, but sometimes they hurt so much he can’t breathe. Blaine doesn’t think he’s a bad person but, since he was 13, the world has seemed a lot crueler.

“ _Blaine_.”

“I... I came out when I was 13. To my mom,” he says, not sure where he’s taking this but he needs to speak, to tell someone who will listen to him without judgement. “When I was 14, I went with a guy to the school Sadie Hawkins. We didn’t do anything wrong. We didn’t kiss. We barely even held hands. We just danced. We were having fun. No one touched us, no one said anything to us. It was liberating to be there with a boy, to dance with a boy, to not have to avoid kissing a girl for a few hours before bolting home. I – I thought we’d got away with it. And then, while we were waiting for our ride home, three guys jumped us. It was kinda nothing, I don’t know, I was – I broke four ribs and dislocated my shoulder. There was mild head trauma so they kept me in for observation. Nate broke an arm, and his nose, and he lost one of his back teeth. He changed schools and I have no idea what happened to him. My mom said we should keep me home as well, home school me for as long as possible, but that wasn’t practical and my dad – my dad doesn’t really understand. My dad seems to think it’s a choice, that I could save myself so much bother if I’d just make some realistic decisions about my future. I – They sent me here, which is my third high school, because, I don’t, there’s obviously something about me, Mr Hummel. People just _know_. I try not to be too obvious. I try to just blend in to the hallways. But they know. They always fucking know.” He claps a hand to his mouth, not because he doesn’t want Kurt to know, but because he doesn’t want to swear in front of Clara’s dad. Clara’s dad, who is gay and beautiful and staring at him with such devastating compassion, who is reaching for him again and drawing him close, soothing him as the tears start again, whispering his name with so much hurt and anger and pain in his voice that Blaine thinks he might break.

“Not to sound like a cliché,” he says against the shell of Blaine’s ear. “But I promise you, Blaine. It gets better once high school is over.”

“It’s only five more months,” Blaine says, pulling back and swiping at his eyes, sniffing and blinking his eyes to clear them. “I just – I just need to make it to May. I’m going to NYU. I’m going to be okay. I’m going to find someone who wants me the way I am and I’m going to be happy. I’m going to be okay.”

Kurt’s face is still sad as he releases Blaine’s shoulders, turning back to the island and resuming chopping vegetables for dinner. “You will be,” he says quietly. “College saved my life as well. Finally being with people who had the same experiences I did, it was amazing. It was liberating. Just – remember that you matter, Blaine. I know it seems like a stupid thing to say, but it’ll be so easy to forget. Remember to protect your heart.”

Protecting his heart, Blaine thinks, won’t be a problem. It’s not in his chest right now anyway. It’s standing in a New York kitchen chopping tomatoes to make Bolognese. It’s standing ten feet from him and it doesn’t even realise.

Which really only figures.

\---

It’s been a tradition since Clara was very small that she and Marc would go back to Montana over Christmas, and Kurt would join them before New Year. For a long time, he reasoned, it was just him and his dad on Christmas morning and, whilst that hasn’t been true for a long time, Kurt is attached to the tradition. When Marc passed, Kurt had skipped three Christmases in Ohio, until Clara was old enough to fly alone with her grandparents to meet her at the other end. As welcoming as Marc’s parents have always been of him, it’s never been where he wants to be. He wants to be in Ohio with his dad, the only three days a year when Ohio seems even remotely like a welcoming place to him.

As ever, Marc’s mom tells him he’s more than welcome to come with Clara when he calls with her flight time and date. “I will,” he says. “I’m going to see my family, my dad and his wife, and my nephews, but I promise I’ll make it to you guys for the New Year.”

“You always say that, Kurt, and we haven’t seen you since Clara was able to travel alone.”

It’s true. There’s always been pressing business in New York. There’s always been a reason for him not to bother. This year he means it. He will make it to Montana for New Year.

He barely makes it to Ohio.

Clara flies out on December 22. Kurt cracks open a bottle of red wine and orders take out Japanese food, a luxury he rarely affords himself because he hasn’t kept his figure on fried noodles and tempura prawns. He watches porn with lazy inattention, catches his lip between his teeth as one of the actors finally sparks something within him, refuses to think about the mop of curls that he wants to tangle his fingers in as well as the top on screen fucks him open, dirty little grunts and mewled appreciation spurring him on as his hand slips beneath his waist band until he’s jerking himself off, hot and messy and desperate in a way he hasn’t been in years. He comes with a groan of his own, hips bucking up, his eyes fixed on the boy on screen who really bears no resemblance to Blaine at all, now that Kurt’s own desperation is sated slightly, and switches the television off before levering himself from the couch and padding to the bathroom to clean up. He emerges in a cloud of steam because the telephone is ringing and he’s concerned it’ll be Clara, saying she’s stuck somewhere, or maybe Sarah saying Clara hasn’t arrived.

It’s neither. It’s Blaine’s voice on the other end of the line. “Is – Is Clara around, Mr Hummel?”

“You can call me Kurt,” Kurt says, not answering the question, suspicious it’s not the question that’s really being asked.

“Oh. Um.”

“She’s in Montana, Blaine. Can I- Do you need her for anything specific?”

“N-no, sir. Just needed an excuse to get out for a little while. My – my parents throw a Christmas party. I guess I hoped I could escape it this year so I didn’t have to deal with the subtle jabs from my dad as he gets more and more drunk. Also, my mom’s sister wants to know when I’m going to meet a nice girl and I think my mom’s told her at every holiday since I was 13 that I’m – that I won’t – but still with the questions. I just, I guess I-”

“Do you want to come here? I can’t offer much beyond cold noodles and diet Coke, but I promise not to make you feel uncomfortable because you’re gay.”

Blaine’s out breath is a rush of pure relief. “Please. You’d be maybe saving my life, Mr – Kurt.”

“I think you’re being a little dramatic, sweetie. If you’re not okay to drive, I’ll pay for your taxi.”

Blaine thanks him again and hangs up the phone before Kurt has a chance to rethink the offer. Kurt spends the next half an hour making sure he doesn’t smell like sex or look like a slob. He discards denim as an option, standing in front of his closet, and decides it’s his house, he’s 37 and single, his daughter is away, he’s not got enough time to fix his hair properly anyway, so he pulls on clean yoga pants and a fitted Henley. Padding into the kitchen in socked feet, he flicks on the coffee maker, clears up the wine glass and bottle, and makes sure the TV is not still set to porn before relaxing back into the couch with an old issue of Vogue. When the doorbell rings, he’s almost convinced himself that sharing his lounge with a ridiculously handsome 17 year old is actually a good idea and not a vicarious grab for youth.

Blaine looks cold when Kurt pulls open the door, but his huge eyes are full of so much gratitude that Kurt is floored for a moment before he steps back. “Come in,” he says. He can’t see Blaine’s car but that doesn’t mean much. “Did – do you need taxi fare?”

“Oh, um. No. No, I – my mom gave me money. Thank you. I wasn’t sure if you were serious about cold noodles so I stopped on the way here. I figured I could make pad Thai or something. If you don’t mind.”

“Mi casa es su casa,” Kurt says, gesturing the kitchen. “Fire away.”

As it turns out, Blaine’s actually kitchen competent. Kurt’s not surprised, exactly, but it’s a pleasant revelation. Besides, he’s enjoying the view from where he’s sitting at the counter. Blaine’s jeans are tight enough for Kurt to have a very good view of his ass. He’s pretty sure that Blaine’s not unaware of him staring, but he doesn’t say anything and Kurt takes it as permission. He sits on the stool right beside Kurt when he’s done, his thigh brushing Kurt’s as he bobs his knee, glancing at him sidelong. He eats two bowls of food and says, food coma settling in after the cold outside, that he needs coffee. Coffee and maybe a hug. One of those things, Kurt thinks, is a really bad idea. He pours two cups of coffee anyway and, another cup later, a sleep heavy Blaine leans his weight against Kurt on the couch and presses his lips to Kurt’s jaw.

Kurt knows he should be the adult and push Blaine away. He tries to. But as his hand comes to rest on Blaine’s cheek, he knows that all he’s really doing is pulling Blaine closer, closer, until he has a lapful of desperate, beautiful teenager and he’s heart deep in a kiss that’s got too many teeth and too little air and feels a little bit perfect all the same.

When he pulls away to breathe, Blaine’s eyes are frantic and terrified, and Kurt reaches for him again. Blaine only scrambles from his lap, though, darting back into the kitchen toward the front door. Kurt can’t haul himself from the couch fast enough to stop him. He reaches the front door just as it slams closed. He knows he won’t find shoes or a coat in time to catch him now either.

He should have known, he thinks, that Blaine wouldn’t know how to deal with the feelings attached to loving someone. More than anything, he’d like to take a baseball bat the boys that broke his ribs, and to the man who systematically breaks his spirit.

\---

“You should invite him for dinner,” his mom is saying for the third time, when Blaine finally manages to haul himself from his bed and into the family kitchen. She’s pouring orange juice into a glass for him, sliding it across the countertop. Blaine plays with the rim and shakes his head.

“Bad idea,” he responds. “Really bad idea. He’s... He’s-”

“Honey, it’s fine. You like him enough to have gone to his house-”

“-He’s nearly 38.”

“-the other night, oh.” His mom pauses in front of the fridge, staring at the closed door for a minute. Blaine takes a sip of his orange juice, but it tastes funny on his tongue, or his tongue tastes funny. Either way round, he can’t drink the juice until his mom turns to face him. He expects a lot of things to be warring on her face, but he should have known better. She’s a pro at making it look like she’s taking things in her stride. He doesn’t know, maybe she actually is. “Are you being safe, Blaine? I don’t want or need details. Just tell me you’re being careful.”

“Mom!”

“He’s a lot older than you are. I just want you to tell me you won’t let him push you into anything.”

Blaine shifts he weight uneasily, weighs his options and makes a conscious decision to lie. It’s a good plan, he thinks, except - when he opens his mouth - his flight response kicks in instead. “I kissed him,” he blurts. “Nothing happened. I just, I kissed him and then I ran away because – because he’s Clara’s dad and I – this is ridiculous. I just. I don’t know. I think I – I think I _care_ about him. I think he notices _me_ , not my age, not my face, but _me_. I think he _likes_ me, too.”

She nods and turns back the fridge. “What does he eat?”

For a minute, Blaine debates petulance. He wants to shock her from her prosaic acceptance of the fact his first serious crush is a 38 year old man. He wants to say “dick” just to see the look on her face. He doesn’t, though. He only shrugs and says, “Food. I don’t know.”

“What do you eat when you’re there?”

“Stuff. Mom, he just cooks food. Whatever’s in. What are you doing?”

“Planning. Make yourself useful, Blaine, and call him. I’m sure he has plans. I need to know if he can make it before January.”

Blaine stares at his hands, at the glass of juice, until both become blurry with tears. He doesn’t even really notice until his mom takes the glass from him before he drops it and pulls him into a hug, his chin hooking over her shoulder as he clings back, fists bunching in her shirt. “I love you,” he breathes, feeling his muscles relax as her hand rubs up and down his spine.

“I know, petal. But you deserve a chance to love someone else as well.”

When Blaine pulls away from her, she lets him go, pats his hair and smiles. “I’m glad you’ve stopped putting so much stuff in your hair,” she says gently. “You look more relaxed, more like my baby again.”

Blaine’s grin is genuine, and there’s an almost palpable bounce to his step as he heads back down the hallway to his father’s study and the private line within it.

\---

Kurt doesn’t make it to Montana at all. He spends two hours after Blaine’s phone call on the phone with his dad, asking him his opinion.

“He’s a kid,” he says. “He’s – God, Dad, he’s beautiful. He’s not even legally an adult, but he’s – he’s an old soul, trapped in there, and I don’t have a fucking clue.”

“What did you say to him?” Burt’s voice is gruff on the other end of the line. Kurt checks his watch and swears again.

“Nothing. Sorry, Dad. You should be sleeping.”

“Nonsense, kiddo. Talk to me.”

“I said I’d go. I said I’d meet his fucking parents. What am I thinking? I’m nearly the same age as his parents!”

“Do you know that?”

“No. But it’s a solid bet that I’m nearer their age than his.”

“It’s Christmas cocktails, Kurt. He’s not asking you to move in with him.”

“He’s only two years older than my daughter.”

“Do you like him?”

“Yes. No. God, yes. You should see him. He’s perfect. I haven’t – Does it make me a terrible person if I say I didn’t feel this immediacy with Marc?”

“No.”

“Good. Good. I just – I feel awful. Because I loved him so much-”

“I think a blind person could have seen that.”

“-And Blaine’s barely a man. He’s still growing. I don’t – I don’t want to hinder him, to stop him becoming everything he should be by making him something I want him to be.”

Burt is silent on the other end of the line, and Kurt tangles his hair around his fingers as he waits for a response, staring idly out of the window at the passing traffic and pedestrians with their scarves around their faces to keep out the biting chill. Just as Kurt starts to believe his dad has fallen asleep, his voice comes through again. “Do you really believe that about yourself? Look at that little girl you’ve helped raise. You won’t stop him being everything he can be, Kurt. That’s not who you are.”

Kurt feels the lump in his throat expand, and he swallows hard against it. “I want him. I want him so much it aches.”

“So meet his parents. Be yourself. Let him come to you. If he doesn’t, then you’ll know it was an infatuation and he’ll move on. You will as well.” Burt coughs a little, and then Kurt hears him fighting a yawn. “Trust me, kid. I know what it is to find love a second time. If it’s real, it’ll be worth the difficulties.”

“Yeah. I guess. I’ll, um. I’m flying overnight. I’ll be late tomorrow morning. Sorry. It was so last minute.”

“You’re coming?”

“Dad, it’s Christmas.”

“You don’t have to, is all I’m saying.”

“This is our version of Friday night dinner now, Dad. I’ll be in early.”

“Okay. Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow. You need picking up from the airport?”

“No. I’ll get a car. I’ve got to be back in New York in a couple of days anyway. I’ve got a dinner date to keep, apparently.”

Burt’s huffed laughter is enough to still the butterflies for a while. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Dad.”

“See you tomorrow, Kurt.”

\---

Blaine hovers in the hallway behind his mom as she pulls the door open. He’s been hovering for hours. Kurt’s not late, not really, but Blaine is a nervous ball of energy. He hasn’t seen him since the kiss, he wants his mom to like him, he wants to touch Kurt’s skin (even if it’s only accidentally when he hands him a glass or asks him to pass the gravy or something) and see him smile. He wants to know what Kurt is wearing, how much effort he’s made, but he can’t see anything around his mom and he doesn’t want to be so obvious as to stand directly behind her and listen to her conversation. His stomach rolls, though, the longer they stand on the doorstep, but then his mom laughs and she moves aside. She takes Kurt’s coat and tells him he can leave his keys in the bowl by the door. “Or you can keep them. Whichever you’d prefer.”

“Thank you,” Kurt says, dropping his keys into the bowl and smoothing out his jeans. Blaine thinks, idly, that keys would have ruined the perfect skin tight lines of his outfit. His mom probably thought the same thing. She’s aesthetically savvy enough to have clocked that, at least. He doesn’t want to be caught staring, though, so he ducks back into the lounge and arranges himself on the couch, only glances up when he smells Kurt’s familiar cologne behind him. Blaine hopes he’s not blushing too obviously, or that he doesn’t look too desperate, because Kurt is absolutely stunning in grey jeans that look almost painted on and a white Henley, charcoal grey vest pulled tight across his chest. His shoulders look gorgeous, his waist trim, and Blaine wants nothing as much as he wants to bury his face in the lines of his hips and thighs. He thinks he’s drowning, dying, and he doesn’t really care.

“Hi,” Kurt whispers and Blaine smiles unsteadily.

“Hello.” And then, “I’m sorry. About before. I didn’t – I-”

“Don’t,” Kurt says, pressing a finger to his lips. “I should have stopped you, and I’m sorry it went so far.”

Blaine huffs a quiet laugh. “I kissed you and you’re apologising. God, I love you.”

The silence that falls is palpable, broken only by the hammering of Blaine’s heart as it tries to escape his ribcage. Kurt looks at him curiously, and Blaine wishes he could read the expression in his eyes. He doesn’t know him well enough yet, though, but he understands the tenderness of Kurt’s hand as it cups his jaw, thumb stroking over his cheekbone, and he turns his face into it, kissing Kurt’s palm softly. He can’t deny the thrill of excitement that shoots through him when Kurt doesn’t withdraw from him afterwards.

Blaine thinks he’d be quite content to stay all evening with Kurt touching his skin, but the hand is hastily withdrawn when his mom bustles in to the room behind them. Glancing between them, Blaine’s painfully aware all of a sudden of exactly how much older Kurt is. His mom is in her mid-40s, her hair glossy black and loose down her spine, and her eyes are the same honeyed tea colour as his own but filled with much more laughter.

“I hope you like Asian fusion cooking,” she says, glancing between them. Blaine wants her to go away, but Kurt is smiling back pleasantly, tucking his fingers into his pockets and canting his head. “Insofar as I’m mostly cooking what I know with what I have. There was a plan, but someone ate half of it for his lunch, Blaine.”

“I was hungry,” he mutters, ducking his head. “I’m growing. I need food.”

“I have one just like that,” Kurt says, laughing. “If it doesn’t have a label specifying it’s not hers, it’s fair game. She ate a whole block of cheese the other week because, apparently, there’s no food in our house.” Even Kurt’s laughter is lyrical, and Blaine’s a little pleased when his mom joins in, even if he’s not sure how he feels being subtly reminded that he’s a child here.

Dinner is a disaster, though. They eat their starters over gentle, easy conversation. Kurt seems genuinely charmed by Blaine’s mom (Grace, she says, smiling ,and Blaine knows it’s not her polite guest smile; it’s her real, from the heart, smile and he’s glad, so glad, that she likes Kurt that much) and answers her questions readily. When she stands to clear the plates, he gets to his feet as well.

“Don’t be silly,” his mom says, gesturing for Kurt to sit. “It’s three plates. I’ll only be a moment.”

It’s as she disappears into the kitchen again that the evening takes a distinct turn for the worse. Blaine hears the front door close, and the rush of cold air wraps around him like the ghost of Christmas past. His dad is not a big man, but he’s an imposing presence in Blaine’s life. He stands in the doorway and flicks his gaze between Kurt and Blaine and takes his seat at the head of the table with an unremitting glare. He doesn’t introduce himself to Kurt, and Blaine wants to slide underneath the table. Kurt brushes his ankle with his foot, though, and offers him a small smile before turning to his dad.

“Mr Anderson,” he says, polite and presentable. “Hi. I’m-”

“I know who you are,” Blaine’s dad says, ignoring Kurt’s proffered hand. “He’s done nothing but talk about you since November. Are you-”

“Dad!”

“Grown ups are talking, Blaine.” His dad doesn’t even look at him, his gaze fixed on Kurt, on Kurt’s pleasant smile.

“Am I what, Mr Anderson?”

“Queer.”

Kurt flicks his gaze toward the door that Blaine’s mom exited through, and then to Blaine, who just wants to slide off of his chair into the chasm of embarrassment yawning beneath it. He feels Kurt’s calf brush against his and meets the cold blue snap of Kurt’s anger when he looks up. Blaine can feel himself beginning to panic, and he reaches for his Coke as Kurt takes another sip of his wine.

“No, sir. I am gay, though.”

“And you have a kid?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yours?”

“I’m not sure I understand the question.”

“Is the kid yours?”

Blaine knows that Kurt understands. He wants desperately to interject but he’s got himself set to mute, as he often does around his dad. He’s learned, over the course of four years, to say nothing when it comes to discussions regarding his orientation. His dad will burn himself out eventually.

“The law thinks so,” Kurt says. Blaine presses his leg against the inside of Kurt’s, fingers curling uselessly in the hem of his cardigan so that he doesn’t do something regrettable with his knife.

“So no, then.”

“Clara is very much my daughter, sir. She looks like my late husband, but her personality quirks are very much mine, as is her bone deep cynicism and refusal to let people like you bring her down. Her dad and I were planning a sibling for her when he died. I honestly didn’t realise you had to be biologically related to consider someone family. My brother would be fascinated to learn that, given that one of his sons is adopted as well.”

“Kurt,” Blaine whispers, shaking his head desperately. “Please. Just let it go now. Please?”

“No, Blaine.” Kurt pushes his chair back from the table and rises in one fluid motion. Blaine fidgets and stares at his dad for a moment. “I need some air.”

Blaine sees the look of triumph that settles across his father’s features. He wants to claw the man’s eyes out. He settles for standing himself and following after Kurt as he leaves the room.

His mom is standing at the back door smoking when Kurt enters the kitchen. She glances round at them and flicks a guilty smile. “Bad habit,” she says. “Stress.”

Kurt barely acknowledges her statement, and Blaine itches to take his hand and take him back to the lounge, kiss him until nothing hurts anymore. Kurt’s talking, though, and Blaine registers his words a beat too late to stop them. “It’s been lovely, Grace. Thank you for inviting me.”

“Oh. Uhm,” she drops the cigarette into pot outside the back door and turns back to face them both. She wipes her palms on her apron and sighs deeply before settling her gaze on Blaine. “Blaine, sweetie, can you go get your father his brandy, please?”

“I – Can I – I want to stay with Kurt.”

“Kurt will be here when you get back. Just, please, go pour your dad a brandy and try not to upset him.”

Blaine leaves reluctantly, his steady gaze settling on Kurt’s immaculate boots. He misses the sad way Kurt’s gaze trails after him, and he misses the way his mom takes all of Kurt in. He doesn’t hear her quiet admonishment to not mistake Blaine’s age for youth. He doesn’t hear Kurt say that he doesn’t, that he knows Blaine’s soul intimately, and that he thinks perhaps he has half of it already.

When Blaine comes back, Kurt is sitting at their breakfast bar drinking Chinese rose tea and eating hand rolled sushi. Blaine hesitates in the doorway, watching his mom laugh in a way he so rarely sees anymore, her hand reaching for Kurt’s shoulder, Kurt’s smile easy. When Kurt catches sight of him in the doorway, he beckons him over, holds out the plate to him. “This is divine,” he says, and Blaine nods.

“Yeah. It always is.”

Kurt puts the plate back down and cants his head. “What’s wrong, Blaine?”

“Nothing.”

“I’ll go make sure your dad is okay, sweetie.” His mom ruffles his hair and kisses his softly. Blaine presses his lips into a thin line and rams his hands into his pockets, if only to stop playing with the hem of his cardigan again. She closes the kitchen door behind her and Blaine finally lets the embarrassment consume him, tears pooling in the depths of his eyes. He blinks rapidly to clear them, and stares at the ceiling in exasperation.

“This wasn’t how tonight was supposed to be,” he says quietly, swaying into Kurt as the older man’s hands brush his waist. 

“I know,” he says. “I know.”

When Blaine finally risks looking at him, Kurt’s eyes are full of understanding. He feels like he’s falling apart. He wants to go back to Kurt’s home with him. He wants to curl up in Kurt’s bed, with Kurt warm and real against him. He wants Kurt to touch him and want him and love him in the same way he knows he loves Kurt. He wants to not be 17 and to be able to say these things, for Kurt to be his partner and lover and to make his dad a thing of the past, a nightmare he doesn’t have to think about ever again. He knows it’s unrealistic, but his heart aches with it.

“I should go,” Kurt says quietly. Blaine wants to say he doesn’t have to but he doesn’t. He only nods and heaves a sigh.

“Yeah,” he says. “I know.”

He retrieves Kurt’s coat and sees him to the front door. Kurt seems to hesitate for a moment and then leans forward and kisses him and, for the longest second of his life, Blaine is too surprised to do anything but freeze before his hand sneaks up to cup Kurt’s jaw and he’s kissing him back, hot and hungry and desperate. 

“I love you so much,” Blaine whispers as Kurt pulls away. He wants to hear Kurt say the words back to him, but Kurt only presses his lips into a thin line.

“You’re 17, sweetheart,” he says softly, his fingers gentle on Blaine’s face. Blaine leans into the touch anyway, kitten rubs his cheek into Kurt’s hand. “I know how infatuation feels. You’ll outgrow me. You should outgrow me. In a few months, you’ll have a whole life you can’t imagine right now. It’s how it should be.”

Blaine shakes his head slowly, smoothes his hands over Kurt’s coat and smiles sadly. “No. I’m going to love you forever.”

Kurt doesn’t say anything else. Blaine doesn’t expect him to. He watches as Kurt gets into his car, though, and doesn’t close the front door until he’s watched the car disappear around his corner (and his dad hollers that it’s December in New York, could Blaine shut the damn door and keep _some_ heat in the damn house).

\---

Kurt doesn’t see Blaine again that year. Clara doesn’t mention him. He thinks - hopes - that Blaine has moved on. He hopes that Blaine has found someone his own age to teach him his own body. He hopes Blaine has someone who will love him for all of the things he is, someone who will make Blaine into the person he could and should be. Sometimes he can see that Clara is itching to tell him things, and that she stops herself. 

She does tell him when they make it to Nationals. Kurt means to take the afternoon off and see them perform. He doesn’t, though. The possibility of seeing Blaine again after four months feels too intense. The boy is only just 18. He should have room to learn who he is, without making himself something he thinks Kurt would want. He tells Clara his assistant is out sick, that he has designs to finalise, that he’s got a dress which is more pins and hope than dress on a mannequin in his work room. All of these things are true, but they’re not enough that he couldn’t go if he wanted to. He really just doesn’t want to make eye contact with Blaine, to hear him sing, to see the way his face changes when he’s around him. Kurt’s aware he’s running scared, but it’s been a long time since he felt even remotely close to how he feels around Blaine and he doesn’t remember the right responses. He’s not sure, since Christmas, that he remembers the word “no”. It’s easier this way.

The only time Clara says anything that could be even vaguely about Blaine is when she says, sometime in May, after Blaine’s graduation, “He’s deleted his fucking Facebook account, Pops. How the fuck am I supposed to keep in touch with him now?”

“Phone?” Kurt says, looking up from Vogue and arching a manicured eyebrow at her. “And also, language.”

Clara rolls her eyes at him. “Don’t be old fashioned, Pop. No one uses the phone anymore.” She smiles as she plops down next to him and peers at his magazine. “I like the colour of that dress. She doesn’t look like teal would be her colour, but it works. Maybe it’s the make up?” She heaves a sigh then, and he lowers the magazine to his lap as he turns to face her. “He’s changed his number anyway.”

“Have you considered swinging by his house?”

“He’s in Florida with his bo - he’s in Florida.”

So, Kurt thinks. At least he has a boyfriend. He’s moved on. He’ll be okay. Out loud, he says, “Well, he can’t stay in Florida. I thought you said he was going to NYU?”

“Who do you think we’re talking about?” She looks at him with narrowed eyes and Kurt’s heart flips even as he stomach sinks.

“I thought - I assumed you wouldn’t - Clara, is Blaine okay?”

“I wouldn’t know. He’s deleted his fucking Facebook.” She smiles at him and kisses his cheek before pushing herself off of the couch. “But I’m glad you care.”

It’s the last he directly hears about Blaine for years.

\--- 

Blaine doesn’t feel like college saves his life. Kurt did that when he was 17. College teaches him a lot about himself though. His freshman year, he sleeps with a lot of boys. Sex is easy. He’s always known that it would be, once he was in a place where he could both get it and have it. He can feel semi-anonymous mutual hand jobs hollowing him out, and he can’t help but feel slightly assaulted when cute boys tangle their fingers in his curls and fuck into his mouth, but he doesn’t think about who he wishes he’d had these firsts with. There’d been the boy the summer after high school, but Blaine knows he’d mostly gone with him because – with the lights dimmed and Blaine too tired to focus hard on the differences – he’d reminded him of Kurt. He doesn’t think about how much his heart still wants to be in that New York kitchen making French toast and coffee, or how much he wants to be sprawled across Kurt’s Egyptian cotton sheets with their ridiculous thread count whilst Kurt kisses each of his ribs in turn, because he knows he can’t have those things. What he can have is this, boys who want him enough for one night to be fun. In the midst of it all, Blaine learns that he trusts too easily (no is supposed to mean no) and that he doesn’t enjoy hard kinks with boys he doesn’t know (he doesn’t enjoy waking up to blood on his sheets), and that he can and does get off on making other boys come, on making them fall apart with his mouth and his hands. On the nights he curls up in his dorm bed alone, he imagines that he’s waiting for Kurt to come home from work and, when his roommate hears him sniff quietly in the darkness, he steals into Blaine’s bed with him and holds him tight until the tears subside and Blaine is asleep.

His second year, Blaine finds his first serious boyfriend. They date for three months before Kev says he can’t do this. Blaine knows what he means. He’s done a lot of things, knows a lot about himself, but he wants to try being in love. Kev still mostly wants to go steady with a boy who puts out. Blaine tries to be disappointed, but Kev’s not The One. 

After Kev, there’s Richard and after Richard there’s Mike, and Dean, and Jeremy. Blaine thinks he loves all of them, but it’s not until he meets Chaz that he gets close to how he feels about Kurt.

Blaine is in his junior year when he meets Chaz (“Charles,” he says with an easy grimace, “No one except for my mother calls me Charles.”). He owns and runs Blaine’s favourite off-campus coffee shop and Blaine’s not ashamed to admit that it’s his favourite coffee place because he thinks Chaz is cute. He’s not fussy about coffee. He only gets drip anyway. Fancy coffee orders have never been his thing. He likes sesame and lemon muffins, good biscotti and drip coffee. He’s never been hard to please. Chaz asks him for his number one afternoon when he’s on his third coffee and no closer to actually finishing the essay he’s working on, and Blaine grins and cants his head and scribbles his digits on a napkin. Chaz reads them back to him and nods, walking away. He has, Blaine thinks objectively, a super cute ass. 

As it turns out, Chaz is 31, an Indiana native transposed because he had Broadway dreams and also because his then boyfriend was enrolled at Tisch. “He dropped out when we were 19,” he says idly over lunch, spearing chorizo with his fork. Blaine watches him with fascination. “He went back to Indiana. He teaches music now. I think he’s happy. He’s seeing this gorgeous guy and y’know, as soon as they can, I think they’ll get married. God knows he deserves it.” He sighs and gazes plaintively at Blaine, who ducks his head and studies his chicken intently. “What’s your story, B?”

“There isn’t one,” Blaine says. It’s not true, but it’s not remarkable either. “New York native. Queer since forever. Love my mom, my dad’s a jerk, older brother is absent. I thought I wanted to be a performer, but now I think I’d like to foster those dreams in others. I’m trying to learn how to be happy, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Mm, yeah. I don’t know. Happy seems to be something that happens to other people.”

Chaz makes him the happiest he’s been for a long time, though, until one day he’s not anymore. It’s not something that Chaz actually does, but Blaine realises, watching him sleep one morning, that they’ve been together for eight months and Blaine doesn’t feel his pulse skid when Chaz touches him anymore. When Chaz fucks him hard into their mattress, Blaine’s thighs against his ribs, his nails digging into his shoulders, Blaine is a million miles away. It’s not Chaz’s throat he’s kissing, not his hair he touches, not his fingers on his dick, coaxing him to come. Eight months in, Blaine knows he’s still imagining Kurt and he knows it’s time to end the charade before both of them get hurt.

He doesn’t have much to take with him when he leaves. Two boxes and a suitcase of clothes. He wishes he felt more than apathetic but he knew when he was 17 that this was how it would be for him. He’s not made for love. He’s made for immediacy and regret. He’s got plenty of the latter.

By the time Blaine graduates, he’s amassed a chequered history of regret and drunken missteps and one emotionally abusive relationship with a man called James who had taken advantage of Blaine’s trust and exploited his daddy issues. It had taken Blaine’s best friends – a boy called Wes, with whom Blaine had bonded over high school show choir championships and failing to live up to your parents’ high expectations, and Sam, who had understood having a history you weren’t proud of but had to own and Blaine’s love of the X-Men – to get him out of it before he lost himself completely in a haze of hormones and pathological niceness. There’s an ache inside of him as he accepts his diploma that he knows belongs to only one person and four years of fighting it haven’t really helped. Blaine’s heart still belongs to Kurt and there’s only one way he really knows to heal that void.

Blaine restarts his Facebook account from scratch. There were a lot of people on it before that he didn’t want to stay in contact with, a lot of people wishing him harm, and a lot of people he didn’t recognise at all. He’s 22 now, though. He’s smarter than he was. He’s going to continue his education and become a teacher, and he’s going to make sure high school is better for another kid like he was than it ever was for him. Mostly, he starts it so he can search for Clara with some possibility of actually being able to send her a message.

Except she’s not there.

Blaine feels a flare of panic, and looks for people who they knew when they were at school together. He adds a few of them and waits nervously for acceptance before trawling through their friends. There’s nothing, though, not even her face that he can click on for more information. There are just a lot of bad college haircuts and shoes, anime figures and political statements. His heart hammers and he thinks he’s had it, he’s done. He’s tried their house. It’s only been four years, but a woman had answered the door and smiled sadly as she explained that the gentleman who’d lived there had moved the summer before. “I think his daughter moved out, so he downsized,” she says. No forwarding address, though. Blaine feels sick.

So he posts a status update instead. “Does anyone know Clara Jackson-Hummel? I need to know if she’s still in New York or whether she left for college. She’s got family in Montana, or in Ohio. We were inseparable in high school. Help!”

Wes responds first: “Are you having an existential crisis? Clara sounds like she might be female...”

Blaine laughs and responds in the negative. “LOL, no. Not a crisis. It’s personal.”

Two days later, he gets a message in his inbox from a pair of rainbow arm warmers and a faded red t-shirt bearing the slogan “Some Men Marry Men. Get Over It”. He can’t see a face and the name is unhelpful, but it’s titled “Blaine?” so he clicks it with some trepidation.

“Blaine? Blaine Anderson? God. I hope you’re the Blaine I think you are and we’re not just two people who happen to know someone with the same name. It’s Clara. If that is you, then oh em eff gee, I’m suddenly thankful for the existence of this website. How are you, boy? I missed you.”

“Yeah, I’m that Blaine,” he types back. Then he stalls. He doesn’t know how to continue. He doesn’t want to seem rude, but much as he’s missed Clara, he really wants to know about Kurt. “I’m sorry for what happened. I didn’t know what else to do. Not after that Christmas, or after graduation. I didn’t handle my feelings well.” He pauses after he presses return and waits for a response that doesn’t come as quickly as he’d hoped. “How is your dad?”

She attaches a picture and sends it to him. It’s Kurt in the park playing with a Boston terrier puppy, hand up to shield his eyes from the sun, but he’s slim and beautiful and he makes Blaine’s heart clench like no one else has ever managed.

“He’s very, very single and very, very in love,” she writes as he’s staring.

“In love?”

“Oh, Blaine. Yes, in love. Since the first day he met you.”

Blaine feels his heart remember how to fly in that instant. He stares at the words on the screen for a while longer and swallows hard. Then Clara responds again.

“Meet me for Pride! He’ll be there. Come to Pride with me.”

Blaine’s forgotten again that no was ever a word in his vocabulary.

\--- 

Kurt’s relatively certain that Clara leaves herself logged into her Facebook account on his iPad on purpose, because the first thing he sees on her wall is that she’s now friends with Blaine Anderson and he can’t resist clicking on the name. His profile picture is him asleep with his face buried in an inflatable penis, which makes Kurt smile before he gets any further. Four years ago, Blaine wouldn’t have been comfortable enough with his sexuality to have touched it in public. Or probably in private, either. There aren’t many pictures to scan through, mostly just him tagged in a lot of his friend’s pictures, but Blaine is beautiful. He’s grown into his own skin, grown his hair out slightly so that it spills in wild curls across his forehead, and his smile looks easier and more carefree than Kurt remembers. 

If Blaine’s face is a suckerpunch, though, his shoulders are positively pornographic. There’s a whole album from a pool party that have only just been uploaded. Spring break trip to Hawaii, according to the album title. Blaine’s skin is smooth, there’s an inviting trail of hair leading down into his shorts, his hips are defined and his waist sinful, but it’s his shoulders that make Kurt flop back onto the couch and fight the urge to palm himself through his jeans (because he is 42, not 19 and he is not jerking himself off to a boy he used to know, not over _Facebook_ ). 

He can’t have any idea that Blaine has no such restraint.

When Clara says she needs another ticket to the Dance of the Pier at the end of June because Monique says she might come, Kurt doesn’t think anything of it. He’d got a spare for Asher (his new assistant; cute but useless) when he was still going to go and at the moment it doesn’t have a home. He tells Clara as much and she beams at him and kisses his cheek. He’s suspicious that she’s up to something but she’s 20 and doesn’t need his constant supervision anymore. Instead she dances away with her phone in her hand and says this is great news.

Kurt’s not convinced. He’s met Monique. He hadn’t enjoyed girls like Monique when he was 21 and one of them, and he really doesn’t now, but if there was ever a place for her then the Dance on the Pier was it. Besides, Kurt was going to dance, get drunk and get laid at the one party he still genuinely enjoyed. Clara could deal with a drunken bitchy Monique if she wanted to bring her. He gives Clara the tickets at dinner and she hugs him hard.

“Love you,” she says and snaps a picture of the ticket to text as proof.

\--- 

Blaine spends June practicing something he gave up his by the end of his freshman year of college, when he stopped trying so hard to make boys want him and focussed on trying to make them need him as much as he did them. He has the ticket Clara gave him when they met for coffee (and hugs because, she said, Blaine’s hugs are epic and she’d missed them) pinned to his mirror and he has a restocked make up bag open in front of him. There was a time, when he was 18, when he could line his eyes blind drunk and still look good. He can’t do it stone cold sober anymore without looking like he’s been punched by a particularly angry pirate. He’s determined, however, to have re-mastered the art before Pride. He cocks his head at his most recent attempt, purses his lips, and appraises that he’s definitely getting better. There’s room for improvement, though. Always room for improvement. He takes a picture and texts it to Clara.

 **Clara 17.47**  
Hot

 **Blaine 5.49pm**  
Needs work

 **Clara 17.54**  
Picky. It’s going to melt off your face anyway.

 **Blaine 5.58pm**  
Oh honey. By the time that’s an issue I’m hoping I’ll have hit a homerun.

 **Clara 18.03**  
You could turn up in a trash bag and I’m sure he’d take you home.

 **Blaine 6.05pm**  
Are you like this with all your dad’s dates?

 **Clara 18.07**  
Only the cute ones, Blainers.

Blaine’s not sure he likes the idea of there being other men in Kurt’s life that Clara has done this with and he’s pondering that idea when she texts him again. 

**Clara 18.10**  
He’s been mostly single since I was 14. If he’s seen anyone, he’s kept it on the DL  
 **Clara 18.12**  
He’s never really hooked up for fun? I mean, ever.

 **Blaine 6.13pm**  
Fuck.

 **Claire 18.13**  
...? What??

 **Blaine 6.15pm**  
I’m panicking. Clara. I’m panicking. I do that. I’ve done that. Fuck. Oh GOD, this is a bad idea.

His phone rings then, and he answers with a breathless huff of air. Clara’s voice is calm, though, and he reaches for it. “Blaine, stop. Breathe. You’re different people. I’m not saying my dad has never had sex with someone he didn’t know. I’m just saying it’s not something he does on the regular.”

“I’m disturbed you’re this comfortable talking about your dad’s sex life.”

“It’s been the two of us for a long time. After Dad died, he always told me if he was seeing someone new. When I was 14, I found a set of test results and asked him about them. He’s been ridiculously honest with me since then.”

“Like, specifics?”

“Fuck no. And I don’t want to know. If you and my dad have sex, I don’t need to know which of you did what to whom. Just tell me if you’re going home with him so I don’t worry about trying to find you at the end of the night.”

“Oh God. I can’t do this. Just tell him the ticket was for me. Let him make an informed decision. I can’t-”

“Blaine Devon Anderson, stop. My dad has been in love with you since you were 17 years old. You _can_ do this. Besides, you haven’t seen him for the Dance on the Pier. Get your make up right and find your inner diva. You’re going to need her.”

“I lost my inner diva in a locker slam when I was 16. Now I’m a ridiculously needy living breathing sex doll. Fuck.” He can feel himself hyperventilating as he throws himself back onto his bed, staring at the ceiling as he tries to calm his breathing again. Clara startles him back into a normal breath pattern instead.

“At least you’re an almost life-size one, kewpie. Get your make up right. I’ve got a neon shirt you can wear if you do it by Friday.” 

“I’m pretty sure anything you lend me is going to be far too small,” he manages, a grin bubbling inside of him. He can hear that she’s smiling too.

“Little bit of exactly the point, honey.”

Blaine’s laughing again when she hangs up the phone. It feels good.

Making good on the promise, he has his eyes right a week before the party. Clara lends him a shirt that is easily too small but makes her eyes turn into saucers where she sits on his bed watching him twist in front of the mirror. “Good?” he asks, painfully uncertain, and she paws at her throat and flops backwards before waving a hand for him to just leave her where she is, to go on without her. Blaine’s laughter is the most honest it’s been in four years.

Blaine makes the most of Pride week, the same way he always has. He doesn’t march, not this year, but he’s on the streets for a lot of it, with Clara and her friends. They drink and dance and have their pictures taken, and a loud queen whom she introduces as Monique (“Dominic,” she whispers with a conspiratorial wink, blowing smoke up into the air and winking before twirling back into the crowd and altering the pitch of her voice again; Blaine’s not sure, but he suspects he’s being flirted with) covers his torso in neon ink. It’s only when she draws a luminous pink phallus on his face that he holds his hands up and says enough. He still ends up with a matching one on his other cheek, and he’s still laughing.

The night of the party, Clara and Monique meet him at their favourite bar. Clara’s grins when he shows up in the t-shirt she leant him (“I didn’t think you’d have the balls,” she says and he sashays, just because), and Monique’s eyes pop at how tight his jeans are, spins him around by his shoulders and spends three minutes just staring at his ass until Blaine glances over his shoulder and arches his eyebrows. 

“Oh, I’m not done,” Monique says and Blaine laughs and takes a seat anyway, shares whatever fruit concoctions the girls are drinking and is just starting to feel the buzz of alcohol and Pride filter through him when they announce it’s time.

Blaine won’t lie. He’s terrified that he’s making the mistake of his life. Monique fusses with his hair (“So cute!” she enthuses, wrapping it around her fingers to separate the curls) and Clara fishes in her purse for their tickets.

“Ready?” she asks him gently and Blaine shakes his head, panic flaring again. He’s not, not even slightly. “You’ll be fine. Remember how much he wanted you then. Remember how good you look right now.” 

She takes a picture of the three of them together before Monique loops her arm through Blaine’s and drags him down the street. When Blaine looks back to see if she’s with them, she’s holding her phone to her chest with a small smile playing on her mouth.

\--- 

Kurt spends longer than he should looking at the picture Clara texts him, his breath hitching slightly at the sight of him. He thinks, dully, that he should have realised that the ticket Clara asked for wasn’t for Monique, who has only missed the Dance once because she had mono and couldn’t drink. It should have rung an alarm bell then. Still, on his phone is a photograph of Blaine, his eyes picked out in black and sparkling vivaciously, his shoulders broad and strong in a neon mesh t-shirt that Kurt’s sure he’s seen in some of Clara’s photographs, which means only one thing to Kurt. Blaine may have grown into the man he is supposed to be, but he’s still the boy Kurt fell in love with as well. Kurt only puts the phone down when his heart starts to skid in his chest and he realises his hands are shaking. He doesn’t remember ever wanting someone as much as he still wants Blaine, not since he first saw Marc. Not since his wedding, and, really, perhaps not even then. 

Kurt stumbles, half-naked, the button of his jeans still undone, into his bathroom. He splashes cold water on his face and tries to calm his breathing as he stares at his reflection. _Forty-two_ , he reminds himself. If he could have just one wish, it would still be that Blaine be even ten years older. Five, perhaps. _And then he wouldn’t have known Clara, and you wouldn’t know him._ He can hear Blaine’s mom’s voice as well, reminding him that Blaine hasn’t really been a boy since he was 15, when three letterman jackets beat him and his date unconscious for daring to be gay in public. He pulls in a shaky breath and meets his own gaze staring back at him. Blaine is 22. He’s old enough now to know what he wants. If he still wants Kurt, then Kurt has no objections. He pulls a handful of condoms from the box in the cupboard above the sink (he likes to know that Clara knows where to look, if she needs to) and throws them into the drawer by his bed next to his lube before finishing dressing. As he examines his own ass in the full length mirror and flattens his t-shirt against his stomach, he thinks he’d still fuck him, if it was an option. He’s rolling his eyes at himself even as he laces himself into his white Doc Martens. The classics, he thinks, never really go out of style.

\--- 

Blaine has never felt so happy to be objectified and pursued as when one of Kurt’s arms slips around his waist and pulls him back flush against his chest, his lips seeking Blaine’s pulse, fuzzy drunk and inhibition free. Blaine can feel the groan that rises in his throat as he arches his neck and presses back against Kurt’s body, his hand groping backwards for Kurt’s hip and ass to ground himself. 

“Fuck,” he breathes quietly, and Kurt’s breath is hot and desperate on his skin.

“If you want,” he says and Blaine is turning then, wrapping his arms around Kurt’s shoulders, moulding his body into the negative spaces between them, his own mouth hot and insistent and confident in a way it wasn’t four years ago. 

“Come home with me,” Kurt moans into his ear as Blaine kisses desperately at his neck, at the hollow of his throat and the edges of his collarbones that he can see and touch and taste. Blaine looks at him and he knows he’s love drunk (and drunk drunk), and he wishes that they were having this conversation somewhere that doesn’t smell of sex and sweat and the heaving pride of having made it, of still being alive, but this is what they have and he can’t wait for perfect.

“Yes,” he nods, emphatic, “God, yes.” 

He doesn’t have to say anything else, because Kurt is kissing him again, taking his hand and guiding him through the press of people and out onto the pier, where he turns to hold him again, pressing their bodies flush together. “I love you,” Kurt murmurs, the words almost stolen by the cooling June air and the party behind them, but Blaine’s been waiting for them forever. He pushes his hair back from his face, and blinks his smoky eyes, and wishes he’d brought a jacket because the sweat on his skin is cooling too fast. 

“I love you too,” he says simply. Because it’s true. Because it never stopped _being_ true.

\--- 

Waking up with Blaine is everything Kurt expected it to be when he’d first let himself imagine it. Blaine invades his space and curls around him, his hair a tangled nest and his eyes radiating love when he flicks them up to meet Kurt’s, endless pools of gold through the curtain of his eyelashes. Kurt can’t quite remember how he turned this boy down the first time, but the one he has in his bed now is the reason he did. This one knows how to ask for what he wants. He knows how to respond. He knows his body, and how to make it sing. Kurt doesn’t want to think about the men who got him here, but he’s quietly grateful to all of them.

“Tea,” Kurt says softly, stretching and reaching across Blaine’s body to grab his glasses from his nightstand. Blaine doesn’t answer, only traces the flex of Kurt’s ribs with his fingers and lips before meeting his gaze again, his eyes turning into saucers as he takes the glasses in, and he’s surging up Kurt’s body to claim his mouth, all teeth and crushing desperation. Kurt can’t do anything but kiss him back, his hands coming to cup Blaine’s face as Blaine swallows his breath and his objectivity. There’s no getting away from this now. Blaine is in his life. He’s hesitant to even think the word “boyfriend”, because it seems so adolescent and Kurt’s been _married_ once, but he doesn’t have a more suitable one. His boyfriend is 22 years old, and one of his daughter’s closest friends. It sounds like a bad Lifetime movie.

When Blaine pulls back, his fingers tracing the shape of Kurt’s glasses almost reverentially, Kurt smiles at him. “Tea?” he tries again, and Blaine shakes his head.

“Wouldn’t turn down coffee,” he says, his voice cracking. Kurt nods and strips the sheets back from his legs. It’s been a long time since he was ashamed of his body, but Blaine’s eyes make him almost preen.

\--- 

It’s only once Blaine has hauled himself from the cocoon of sheets that he really lets himself imagine that this could be his life, that maybe Kurt won’t ask him to leave once the rush of endorphins wears off. His mouth feels furry and his head feels fuzzy, and he knows he’s buck naked but he doesn’t want to rummage through Kurt’s drawers to find something to cover himself, so he pulls a sheet from the bed to wrap around himself and stands in the middle of the room staring at nothing until Kurt returns with two mugs of coffee. Blaine’s stomach growls and Kurt’s laughter is musical, so Blaine grins back at him lopsidedly.

“I – I can shower and go,” he says quickly, and Kurt’s face crumples in such a way that Blaine shakes his head and crowds back into his space, touching him everywhere he’s allowed to, sheet ghosting the floor in elegant waves.

“Don’t,” Kurt says softly, and Blaine drops his hands. “No, I mean. Don’t go. I – I don’t want you to go.”

Blaine swallows hard and nods his head. “Then, can I dress?”

Kurt arches one sardonic eyebrow and says, “If you want. I can’t imagine any way I’d rather spend my morning that undressing you again.”

Blaine laughs and buries his face against Kurt’s neck, shivers as Kurt’s hand rubs down his spine and grips his ass, pulling his flush against his body. Blaine’s arms wind around Kurt’s waist and he trails his lips back to Kurt’s jaw, flicking his tongue against the roughness of his stubble.

“I love you,” he says, sober this time, and Kurt’s hands tighten their grip on his ass.

“Love you, too,” he breathes. 

And Blaine thinks, finally, that he’s home.

 

 **FIN**  
February 2013


End file.
